With cinemas set to open their doors around the UK in May, this time studios aren’t being shy about their big films.
Appreciating that the movie calendar is likely to remain in some degree of flux for a while to come, there currently seems less reticence from big studios to schedule their movies when cinemas reopen their doors this spring. In England, drive-in cinemas can open again in April, but all eyes are on May 17th as the date when the majority can start showing films again.
As such, quite a few films are being lined up to take advantage of that already, with Monday May 17th alone seeing the release of the wonderful Sound Of Metal, Benedict Cumberbatch in The Courier and Maya The Bee 3 (the latter of which is currently marked for a wide UK release).
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What’s interesting though is the releases following the rest of the month. Because as things stand, on Friday May 21st, we’re getting the new Saw movie Spiral, Ryan Reynolds in Free Guy, Infinite starring Mark Wahlberg, Peter Rabbit 2, Billie Piper’s directorial debut Rare Beasts, The Human Factor from Dogwoof and international release I Never Cry. You could be forgiven for thinking that looks like a – shush – normal week of releases.
Whether studios will blink or not and shift their movies again remains to be seen, but Universal currently has Fast & Furious 9 still on the starting block for May 28th in the UK, the same day that Disney’s Cruella and Warners’ The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Given previously-announced streaming plans, the latter two of those are likely to hit their dates at the very least.
It’s a marked difference from last year’s reopening, when studios hedged their bets over putting their films back into cinemas. This, in turn, gave space for smaller distributors to step in, which they duly did. Hopefully, whatever the new normal in cinemas is, those smaller distributors will continue to find space.
More as we hear it.
